Of piracy, product activation and delusion
It’s Sunday night, and that means I can’t sleep, so I’m going to throw back a couple shots of Maker’s and while I’m waiting for it to kick in I’m going to try and write down some of the things I’ve been thinking for the last hour.
Recently, one of my favorite programs (Proteus, a Mac IM client) added product activation. I hate, hate, hate product activation. Actually, I hate copy protection/authentication/antipiracy measures in general, so let’s run with that.
I’ve copied a lot of damn software in my lifetime. I’ve done a lot of horrible things that I could’ve probably gone to jail for. And as I sit here, staring at this tiny screen, typing notes into this piece of software, I feel like waxing philosophical. Big shock. So let’s tackle the computer industry version of pro-life v. pro-choice again.
Point #1: Piracy isn’t theft. How do I know? Theft involves illegal removal of physical property from a person or organization. Theft directly causes loss because the physical property is simply no longer available for sale. (In the hierarchy of evil motherfuckers, thieves fall right after child molesters and kiddie porn producers.)
Point #2: Because piracy is not theft, piracy does not directly translate into loss. Again, this is a point that anybody should be able to figure out. Because piracy is not theft, as such, the ability to call piracy loss is called into question, because the motives of the person doing the copying have to be analyzed before we can determine if loss has occurred. Simply put, there’s no way an illegal copy can be a direct loss unless the person doing the copying would have paid for a copy of the software.
Point #3: Piracy provides for widespread adoption. Once upon a time, I read a story about how DOS was the most pirated piece of software in the world. As you might have guessed, this story isn’t exactly new. But it does beg some very interesting questions, since DOS and later Windows allowed Microsoft and the IBM PC to take over the computer market. What would have happened if DOS could never be copied? Would we all be using Macs now? (ohwait)
Point #4: Copy protection is almost always futile. Only in rare cases has anyone produced copy protection that cannot be defeated, and in those rare cases the protection methods used are almost always something tied to interaction between machines. As long as an application can be isolated and be an island in and of itself, it will never be able to be truly protected. The only real solution to this would be to make everything centralized and Internet-based, which the game industry is already doing. That sucks a lot. Oh well, I didn’t need my computer anyway.
Point #5: Copy protection serves no purpose other than to inconvenience the user. No, really. Ask guys like Macrovison and they’ll tell you the same thing. The art of copy protection is to add just enough annoyance that the average user will put up with it and not revolt. Why? Because the determined pirate (read: the ones that are doing the real harm) already knows how to get around it, and aren’t really bothered by it. So the end users end up footing the bill for industry paranoia. Drive or OS compatibility problem? Tough shit. Want to install that software without being connected to the Internet? Fuck you. Want to play that game just on your lan? Eat cock, you evil pirate.
Point #6: Copy protection assumes that users are evil first. HEY FUCK YOU YOU CAN’T INSTALL OUR SOFTWARE WITHOUT A REAL KEY, ASSWIPE Wait, you have a legal key? Oh, hi, loyal user, sorry for calling you a cumguzzling cockholster there, we thought you were a bad guy. Why? Oh, well, you started our software. We automatically assume that everybody who runs our software is mean and evil until they prove otherwise. (This is a purely philiosophical point, I’ll admit, but I believe it’s the most important one as well. When you are coming from a point of view of distrust, you automatically must distrust everyone equially. Believe me, I know, I’m the master of distrust. Somebody has to play the nice guy eventually, why can’t it be the people that you are giving your hard-earned money to?)
This is hardly done, but I’ll finish it later. Maybe. One thing:
Difficulty: There’s no really tangible way to measure (and thus prove) any of the shit that I have so elequently whined about here in this here article. The computer industry is big, angry and complex, and until there is a way to directly link copy protection to sales, there’s no way to prove that one has anything to do with the other. So it’s all academic, and I just spent the last 40 minutes pissing and moaning for nothing.
Yeah, that’s a real change for me, alright.